1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to bandwidth management in networks. More specifically, the present invention relates to bandwidth management in powerline home networks.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Powerline communication (PLC) is expected to be increasing as a viable backbone for home networks. The first generation of PLC products, for example, HomePlug 1.0 (www.homeplug.org), are already widely used. Currently, the second generation PLC product for Audio/Video streaming are under development and will be capable of carrying a plurality of MPEG2-HD streams. The second generation PLC network has a greater bandwidth capacity than the first generation PLC; however, even the bandwidth available is not large enough for all applications. For example, the bandwidth may be limited when a powerline is shared with neighbor. Therefore, bandwidth sharing on the powerline network is an important issue. In a shared network, if a neighbor begins to send a high bit rate stream, most of the bandwidth for the network is used up, the network speed will slow down significantly, and possible no more bandwidth for additional transmissions will be available.